Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Friday we decided to get a good visual on how big a giant is. The description stated that Hagrid was 6x time size of an average man. So I asked Morgan to name six men. He was pretty quick to come up with a list: Daddy, Poppy, Uncle "D", Uncle Chris, Uncle Damien, & Grandpa. (Thanks to all 6 of you!) He then measured Daddy and wrote that down, which left him with 5 phone calls to make. It took us a while to get all our information together, and when we finally had it all we decided to wait until the morning to set to work. Only we had a soccer game, and one thing led to another. Monday morning we showed Morgan how to use a calculator and had him add up (in centimeters) how tall each person he'd surveyed was. We explained that when you average you have to divide the number you get amongst the amount of people you spoke with. (Dividing is a new concept, and while he multiplies (unaware) multiplying was a new concept as well.) Once we had all the mathematical equations taken care of, we headed outside.

We were armed with chalk, information, and tape measures and set to work. Daddy was elected chief sketcher, and Morgan gave him the information he needed. Jayden was chief "make sure he's doing it right, and he's not Mom, it's not right I'm sure!" man. I was simply "Women with four shirts on attempting to take a picture while the wind blew me away." Now that you've got all that figured out..

Daddy decided to draw the head first, something we had no measurement for. Morgan did inform him that Hagrid should have a shaggy beard, beetle black eyes, and black hair.

Next we moved on to his arms (again no measurements), but we knew his hands were the size of trash can lids. Morgan had all ready measured our lid and came up with 68 centimeters. So his hands were drawn (and for the record I could sit in his hand with my knees drawn up without any problem at all!) The boys were impressed they could each sit in a hand and decided it would be a lot cooler if they just got a ride from Hagrid for a variety of things.

After that they walked out the length of his body and started drawing. Let's just say I heard a few, "Mom, is he going too far?" from Cheif, "He's doing it all wrong." However, it truly was right. Sadly our driveway is a big hill so we don't have a dead on picture, that and we needed to be on the roof for a good view, but:

Once they filled in his legs, they put on his feet. Morgan was hoping for some bare feet, but Daddy felt the fingers/hands were bad enough and shoes would be a lot easier. Thus we have boot clad feed. We had measurements for these knowing they were the size of a baby dolphin. We looked up dolphins and Morgan reported back that they were 3 feet when they are born. So we used our nifty convertor and came up with 94 centimeters and there you have it.

After which we decided to see how each of us compared to Hagrid in height. It was hard for the boys to fully grasp this since they were laying down, but even with three of us stacked head to foot we didn't come close to his waistline.

The broom is there for another eye view of just how big our Hagrid is. As for those funky knees and little shoe laces.. we were going for humor, after all if the neighbor looked out their window and saw our kids laying flat on the pavement getting chalk outlines we didn't want them to panic!

Daddy then drew each of the boys next to Hagrid so they could each visualize just what a huge size difference this was. They found the whole process of being outlined so fun they made Daddy lay down so they could outline him as well. They thought this was loads of fun, and I they considered making him take off his shoes so they could outline his toes.. I think this is a math lesson they'll be remembering for a while, after all there's still a giant out in the driveway!